Reluctantly, Felix followed, trying to figure out how Geronimo, the famous Apache war chief, could be on “display.” After Maisie and Felix had met Crazy Horse, Felix had read a lot of books about Native Americans. He knew that Geronimo had led fierce attacks in the West after soldiers killed his mother, wife, and children. Eventually, he’d surrendered and became a prisoner of war for the rest of his life. Were prisoners of war on display here? Felix wondered.
Soon enough, they arrived at a giant tepee. In front of it sat a very old man with a face almost as wrinkled as Penelope Merriweather’s. He had on a baggy black suit and a black fedora, but he was posing with a bunch of arrows pressed across his chest. Photographers snapped his picture, but his expression stayed completely stoic, with no hint of emotion. Felix suspected that if this old man was Geronimo, he must feel humiliated to have to sit there like that and have everyone gawk at him and take his picture.
“He doesn’t look fierce at all,” one of the teenage girls said, disappointed.
“Well, he’s old now,” Felix said.
The girl sighed and got in the line waiting to buy Geronimo’s autograph. “I guess I’ll get his autograph, anyway,” she said.
“Do you think he’s an imposter?” her friend asked.
The girl shrugged. “General Christiaan de Wet was much more impressive,” she said.
“Was he one of the soldiers who made Geronimo surrender?” Felix asked.
The girls laughed.
“Twice a day over in the Anglo-Boer War Concession they reenact major battles from the Second Boer War,” one of them explained. She had fat brown banana curls that bounced when she talked.
Felix made a mental note to look up Anglo-Boer War when he got home. He had no idea what that war was.
“It takes about three hours,” her friend continued, “but it’s worth it.”
“They have more than six hundred veterans from both sides doing the reenactments,” the other girl said, growing excited as she talked and sending her banana curls into a frenzy. “But at the very end, Boer General Christiaan de Wet escapes on his horse and leaps into a pool of water from fifty feet high!”
“Maybe not fifty feet,” her friend said. “But very, very high.” She sighed. “It’s very dramatic.”
Felix stood on tiptoe, trying to catch a glimpse of Maisie. There she was, right at the front of the line, talking to Geronimo.
When she turned to leave, she scanned the crowd until her eyes settled on Felix. Maisie waved a piece of paper and pushed her way to her brother.
“I got his autograph,” she said proudly.
The two girls Felix had been talking with asked to look at it, but Felix thought the whole spectacle was terrible.
“Honestly, Maisie,” he said. “How could you? The poor man is being treated like an animal in the zoo. Just like those people in that Philippine Village.”
“No,” Maisie said. “He’s making lots of money selling autographs and photographs.”
She pointed at a teenage boy walking by, smug beneath a black hat just like Geronimo’s.
“He even sells his hats,” she said. “He’s getting rich!”
“I bet they don’t even let him keep the money,” Felix said.
“Who’s they?” Maisie asked, tucking the autograph into her pocket.
“The US government!” Felix said. “He’s a prisoner of war!”
Maisie glanced over at Geronimo carefully signing his name for someone.
“He doesn’t look like a prisoner of war,” she said.
“Well, he is!” Felix insisted.
“Fine!” Maisie said, exasperated. “Let’s go see something else.”
“Maybe Charles Lindbergh is in that fancy building over there,” Felix said, trying to be hopeful.
“Is Missouri anywhere near Minnesota?” Maisie asked, wishing yet again that she’d paid more attention in social studies class. All those M states mixed her up.
“I don’t think so,” Felix said. He tried to picture the map of the United States, but the middle was just a big blank to him.
By the time they reached what turned out to be Festival Hall, the crowd had entered and the massive doors had been shut. But the sounds of a band made their way outside.
A man in a bowler hat grinned.
“Why, that’s the March King himself playing ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’” the man said to no one in particular.
“Who’s the March King?” Maisie asked him.
The man seemed surprised someone had heard him.
“Oh, pardon me for marveling out loud. But I can’t help myself. It’s all so . . . so marvelous!”
He held out two cold bottles of Dr Pepper.
“Have you had this yet?” he asked Maisie and Felix.
And even though their mother warned them to never ever take something from a stranger, the heat of the day and the fact that they’d had nothing to eat or drink in almost forever made them both eagerly accept the cold sodas.
“Isn’t it delicious?” the man asked, awestruck. “Cherry soda! It goes especially well with hot dogs. I’d read about hot dogs, of course, but here there are hot dogs everywhere!”
“There are?” Maisie asked, glancing around hungrily.
“Why, you haven’t tasted one yet?” the man said. “We must remedy that. Right over there that cart is selling hot dogs!”